One girl's salt is another girl's fleur de sel

June 04, 2012

Last summer I spent several weeks working on recipes with the inimitable Sara Boswell, sorghum scientist and vintage goddess, and the results are here, in this ebook (note: I am uncredited as I wrote it while an employee of Enjoy Life Foods).

The donut recipes, a joint effort between the two of us, are by far my favorites.

The pumpkin donut is especially tasty:

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cake Donuts

Makes 4 large or 6 small cake donuts

These not-too-sweet pumpkin donuts will fool even the most discerning donut eater. They’re light, fluffy and delicious and we loved them when they’re simply dipped in sugar glaze. As with the other donuts, the key to making these come out just right is mixing the donuts as we recommend below and not adding the baking soda until the very end.

Grease the donut pan with a very thin coating of palm oil and dust the oil with sorghum flour. This will allow the donut to de-pan easily.

Mix dry ingredients except for baking soda together. Cream honey, sugar, and palm oil in a bowl, then mix in pumpkin puree. The mixture will be streaky – don’t worry. Mix in ½ the dry ingredients including the spices (except the baking soda) followed by the rice milk and the remaining ½ of the dry ingredients (except the baking soda). Fold in the “tapioca egg” 1 tablespoon at a time and mix thoroughly. Add apple cider vinegar to the mixture. Once that is mixed in, incorporate the baking soda. Fold in the chocolate chips then pour batter into prepared donut pan.

Bake at 375 for 15-17 minutes.

Dip into sugar glaze while still warm and place on wire rack. Excess glaze can be returned to the pan and reused.

If baking ahead, freeze un-iced donuts as soon as they cool. Decorate before serving.

Sugar Glaze

2 cups confectioner’s sugar

2 T water + 1 T water if too stiff

1 t vanilla (optional)

In the bowl of a food processor, mix the confectioner’s sugar until free of lumps (you can skip the mixing step if yours is lump-free). Add water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until the mixture is smooth. If using vanilla, add it while the mixture is still lumpy to avoid making the mixture too thin.

If using this to coat donuts, stir mixture just as donuts are coming out of the oven and pour over top of donuts set on a wire rack a minute after they have come out. The excess glaze can be reused.

May 19, 2011

When I was in culinary school, one of my classmates from Virginia always fell back on the same recipe whenever she was responsible for coming up with the dessert special: chocolate peanut butter pie. As a fan of chocolate and peanut butter, I found the combination - and in a pie, no less - irresistible. It was homey and rich and satisfying.

Cut to 2011. Food allergies, especially peanut allergies, are way up. Gluten intolerance is on the rise. Chocolate peanut butter pie is off limits to many. So what's a girl to do?

Make a vegan chocolate sunbutter-chocolate pie, that's what.

This is a fairly easy recipe with not many ingredients. It works like a charm. You'll need to make my much adored tapioca gel as the base for this, and the results will look strange at first, but the resulting pie filling is custard-smooth.

Cake and Commerce's Fudgy Chocolate Sunbutter Pie (vegan and free of the top 8 allergens)

Empty bag of chips into a medium-sized bowl (make sure they are mini because larger ones will not melt fast enough. If you only have large chips, break them up in a food processor first). Combine tapioca flour and cold water in saucepan and bring to a near boil. The solution will turn translucent and sticky. Pour immediately over chocolate, stirring constantly, until all chocolate is melted. The mixture will be very lumpy and bumpy – don’t fret! Immediately whisk the sunbutter into the mixture – it should start to look smooth, although a little grainy. Stir in the vanilla and the agave, if desired. Pour into prepared pie crust.

Top with chocolate chips, extra crumbs, and roasted sunflower seed pieces, if desired.

Leave in the refrigerator overnight, or until set, about 3 hours.

Serve cold or at room temperature. To store, tightly cover with plastic wrap and store in refrigerator. Keeps up to four days.

May 15, 2011

I've been eating brown rice pasta since this blog was founded about 5 years ago. And I've always liked it. Not as much as I like the chewy, toothsome texture of wheat pasta, but I find that if I drowned it in enough sauce, I can fool almost anyone. Except when I reheat it.* There is no mistaking the gummy texture of reheated rice pasta. But I recently discovered a trick that significantly improves the texture, performance, and speed of cooking of brown rice pasta. And allows reheating (though microwave cooking more than a few seconds will still gum it up a bit). And I learned it from a book.

By chance, The other day during a long plane ride I read the remarkably enjoyable and enlightening book, Ideas in Food, the print version of the much loved pro-chef blog, Ideas in Food by Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot. If you love to cook and haven't read this book, I can't recommend it enough. Although many of the insights are around techniques and concepts that may be alien to some home cooks, their advice and insight is inspiring and may get you to try out things you'd otherwise not consider.

One simple idea from their book has completely changed the way I prepare brown rice pasta. On page 116 of their book, (or, in fewer details, this page on their blog), Talbot and Kamozawa explain how to quickly cook pasta - cutting cooking time in half, if not more - by soaking pasta in cold water for 1-2 hours before cooking (they hold the hydtrating pasta and water in a Ziploc-type bag). The hydrated pasta can then be stored in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. The pasta can then be quickly cooked in boiling water for 1-5 minutes, depending on the duration of the soak. It is a great trick for restaurants, which often par-cook their pasta before service with mixed results. Pre-hydrated pasta cooks up fresh and chewy, and the long soak in cold water prevents sticking in the water and reduces sticking during storage, so less boiling water is needed to get perfect pasta. Think of the pot of water you boil for a pasta dinner, now imagine that water reduced by more than half. The time required to boil that smaller pot is significantly less than that large pot of water. Voila, you just got a few hours of your life back.

Talbot and Kamozawa then make the hydration even more compelling by introducing a flavorful soaking liquid. They tried out mushroom stock and clam broth as the soaking medium for the pasta, and both yeilded excellent results. They also found that they could roast it in the oven prior to soaking, and that leaving dry pasta for a two-hour stint in the smoker resulted in a savory, flavorful finished dish.

So how does a chapter and a blog post on wheat pasta translate into meaningful gluten-free food prep?

Well, what applies to wheat also applies to rice, with some modifications.

Wheat hydrates much more quickly than rice does, by a factor of about .5, or 50% more quickly. So rice pasta needs a longer soak to reduce cooking time. Wheat doesn't mush up quite as much as rice does, so rice requires a second cold water rinse after cooking. But for spaghettis made of either grain, a one hour hydration vastly improves the texture of pasta. And the cold water soak helps reduce the amount of starch on the surface of the pasta, making it much less sticky as it cooks.

After a one hour soak, spaghetti-style rice pasta is slightly more flexible than raw pasta but still brittle. Cooking to al dente at this point reduces boiling time from 15 minutes to 4 minutes, and only a small fraction of the water recommended by the manufacturer is needed. After 1.5 hours, the pasta was much softer and flexible though it broke when bent. After two hours, the spaghetti could be bent without breaking. It was al dente, though I'd not want to eat it raw. At 2.5 hours, the pasta is al dente and is extremely flexible, but it cooks almost too fast and gets mushy quickly. All of the pastas, once drained and sealed in a Ziploc-type bag and refrigerated continued to soften as the water migrated to the dryer center of the pasta strand. The softening was perceptible in the raw pasta but did not negatively impact the finished texture.

I prefered the 1 hour or 1.5 hour soak over the hydrating soaks of longer duration. Even though 1-1.5 hour soaks required a longer cook time, it was easier to control the cooking time and texture and the pasta was slightly less sticky. I fed the results to a friend and he agreed that the al dente pieces reminded him more of the wheat pasta and that the gummier mushy pasta was definitely not like wheat pasta at all.

Once the pasta is cooked and cooled in cold water, it can be wrapped in an airtight container or bag and stored in the refrigerator up to three days and reheated. The results will be excellent.

Other pasta shapes - penne, macaroni, rigatoni, sprials - will require more hydration time. Two hours is usually enough.

My takeaway is that any amount of hydration will improve cooking time. Even if you can only hydrate the pasta while you wait for your pasta water to heat up, you will reduce your cooking time.

Can hydration be accelerated? I don't like sticky pasta, though. What else can I do?

Well, there's not a ton you can do about stickiness. Rice pasta is rice pasta, though as you'll see below, you can do a few things that will help it become the best pasta it can be given its inherent limitations.

I decided to try out another technique to see if I could further improve the process without affecting texture. I had read in Ideas in Food about the par-cooking of rice for risotto. They explain how starch absorbs water thusly:

"When we cook rice or potatoes in hot water, the starch granules soak up the water and swell to the point of bursting, or gelatinize. The more water is absorbed, the lower the gelantinization temperature. If the starch does not cook long enough to absorb enough water, it will not completely gelatinize."

-Talbot and Kamozawa, Ideas in Food, page 120

One of the problems with rice-based pastas is they get gummy fast, that is, rice pasta gels and gets sticky when cooked because the cell walls of the starch (mostly amylopectin, with a low but appreciable amount of amylose) burst when cooked. If a starch can undergo retrogradation (a process that is responsible for the staling of bread but also the reinforcement of starch cell walls, a good thing for rice pasta and potatoes), some of this sticky/gummy texture can be remedied. But rice is generally low in amylose, one of the keys in retrogradation. The amylopectin fraction of rice starch forms crystals as it cools that melt as it is heated up. Anyone who has eaten cold rice before reheating it has experienced this. Rice pasta is similarly grainy when cold.

Rice pasta, however, is not rice. Unlike rice, rice pasta is heat-extruded and dried, meaning its chemical composition is quite different from that of dried rice. According to this study from Cereal Science (published in 2000), heated and extruded pasta that is cooked and then kept in refrigeration will undergo rapid but low levels of retrogradation - meaning that stickiness cannot be completely eliminated from rice pasta but that it can be reduced to a minor but perceptible extent.

But here's the good news: you can both speed up the hydration of the pasta AND (mostly? somewhat?) conquer stickiness with a process that's a little fussy but not difficult.

METHOD

Rice gelantinizes at 150-170 degrees, depending on the type of rice used. I don't know what kind of rice is used in brown rice pasta, but I assumed that because the starch molecule was damaged in heating and extruding, the gelatinization temperature should be lower. If rice pasta is cooked somewhere around that temperature, I reasoned, maybe I could use retrogradation to my advantage by gelatinizing the starch without bursting the molecule.

I heated water on the stove to 155F. I put the uncooked dry rice pasta in the 155F water for 20 minutes, until it was soft. I immediately plunged it in cold water to chill it down completely. At this point the pasta could have been refrigerated up to three days. I then boiled water and put the par-cooked pasta in for 30 seconds. That's right. 30 seconds. I then drained it and plunged it into cold water. I put it in a bag and put that bag in the refrigerator and checked it every five minutes.

And guess what?

The pasta wasn't sticky at all. It didn't stick to my hands or to itself. It was a little tacky, but significantly less than it does from a straight boil or even from the pre-hydration method. Of course it still got a little crunchy and sticky over time in the refrigerator, but not to the extent I had experienced before. And the texture was much more toothsome and - dare I say it - similar to wheat pasta.

And it tasted really good.

Here's the summary of what I did:

Parcook pasta 20 mins in 155F salted water > chill down in cold water and drain > Boil for 30 seconds > Chill in cold water and drain > use immediately OR refrigerate up to 3 days

Buckwheat Soba

I wondered how the soak would affect buckwheat pasata, or Soba. I love soba - it is easily one of my favorite noodles. I've almost never liked the ubiquitous-in-the-US dry soba as the texture never seemed quite right to me. From time to time I've purchased fresh frozen soba noodles, but they're expensive and available only at specialty markets. By contrast, dry soba is available almost anywhere that has an international section with Japanese or Korean ingredients, including Whole Foods. Not all soba is 100% buckwheat, so read the label carefully before purchasing or you may inadvertently glutenize yourself.

I soaked the (Roland Brand, purchased at Whole Foods) buckwheat soba in cold water and checked it every five minutes. Because it is thin and fine, and buckwheat is highly water absorbent, after twenty minutes it was soft and hydrated. If broken, it looked al dente. I was worried it would be sticky, as cooked dry soba often is. I rinsed it just before plunging it into boiling water and cooked it for 1 minute. I removed it from the water, gave it a quick cold-water rinse and tasted it.

It was the best dried soba I'd ever tasted - it had the texture of fresh soba. It was chewy and tender. It wasn't mushy or sticky. It was perfect.

So you think you want to try this out

Of course, you do need to prepare ahead to use this technique. Hydrating pasta takes at least an hour to rinse of the sticky surface starches and accelerate cooking time - so planning is a must. If you hydrate your pasta as you prepare the rest of your meal, and save cooking the pasta until the end, you can use the technique at meal time. Because you can hold the hydrated pasta up to three days, a meal planned in advance can be simplified with the technique. The technique is passive and the hydrating pasta only needs attention when it needs to be removed from the water it is soaking in. The pasta will disintegrate if hydrated for too long. You'll need to hydrate larger pasta shapes longer - every pasta type is different.

There's a bunch of food science behind why this works, but I'm no food scientist and any attempt I make to explain it will fall short. If you're really interested in rice science and food tech, you can always read this book.

In any case, pre-hydrating your gluten-free pasta will improve it. Even if it is just the time it takes to prepare and serve it. And if you try the flavorful hydration liquid, you'll make it far more interesting than you ever imagined it could be.

*Note on reheating: if you use a microwave to reheat your pasta, I don't care how it's been pre-hydrated, it will always turn out gummy because of the rice flour. To avoid gummy, sticky, mushy and dissolving pasta, reheat your cooked pasta either in hot water, sauce heated up in a pan, or, if already sauced, gently in a covered sauce pan, stirring and checking as you reheat it. Once it starts gumming up, there's no going back. Such is the danger of high temp high heat reheating of rice-based pasta.

April 22, 2011

I love chocolate cookies. I know a lot of people out there with egg allergies love a good, fudgy chocolate cookie too.

Most egg replacers don't go quite the distance - they'll bind but they don't provide body. Using my tapioca gel (recipe and explanation here) I developed a gluten-free, vegan cookie that's just like the original except for one thing: these won't make you ill if you are allergic to the Big 8.

I made four versions of these cookies until I came up with a taste and texture I liked. All of the versions worked, there was just something a little off about each one of them until one of my colleagues helped me identify what it was: in my gluten-free baking mix, which is made entirely from whole grains (brown rice, quinoa, buckwheat and millet, finely ground and purchased here), I had neglected to toast the quinoa. A quick toasting in the oven remedied that flavor issue (note: even if quinoa is washed before milling, it still needs a little time in the oven).

These cookies are pretty easy to make and are very fudgy. You can make them cakier by adding about 1/4 C more flour to my basic recipe, outlined below. You'll want to press them down a bit if you go the cakey route - otherwise they'll be very tall).

If you have time to refrigerate them overnight, it will allow the dough to absorb moisture and make it a little easier to handle.

If you don't want to use grapeseed or sunflower/safflower oil, use coconut oil - but melt it first. The dough will be a little different, a little easier to handle, but the texture will change from what I have in the pictures above and below. Coconut oil is solid at room temperature and behaves differently in baked goods from liquid fats. This is not a problem, just a choice!

***Gluten-free flour blend: I used 1/2 cup + 3 tablespoons TOASTED QUINOA FLOUR, 1/4 cup millet flour, 1/2 cup brown rice flour and 1/2 cup light buckwheat flour. You can use anything you like, but keep in mind that not all flours are created equal. You may need to add a few T of flour to this mix if your mix has a lot of starch in it.

Make tapioca gel: in a sauce pan combine tapioca starch with cold water and stir until dissolved. Over high heat, stir gel until it goes from thin and cloudy to thick and translucent. Remove from heat immediately - don't boil. Cool (you can speed this up by whisking it or pouring it into a glass baking pan with lots of surface area and putting it in the refrigerator).

Combine sugar, cocoa, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Mix until combined. Add the oil and vanilla and the cooled tapioca gel. It will look a little spongy. Mix until evenly combined. Stir in all the flour at once and mix. Add chocolate chips, if desired. Mix until dough is uniform.

If the dough is very soft and pourable, add a little bit of extra baking mix to the bowl, one tablespoon at a time. It should be sticky but pliable, not hard and not too wet.

If possible, allow to sit overnight. Flours will absorb some of the water and it will become a little easier to handle. It is not necessary to do so, however. The dough will still be sticky either way. Just a little less so if you can let it sit overnight.

Here's where it helps if you have a small ice cream scoop - it'll make forming cookies easier.

With that small, .25 oz ice cream scoop (or with a tablespoon) drop small scoops of dough into the confectioner's sugar. Roll in sugar (this is sticky work, okay?) and place on sheet pan, about 12 per pan.

Bake in oven for 12-14 minutes, or until surface is crackled and does not look wet.

Allow to cool. Enjoy or store in an airtight container up to 3 days.

For a more 'cakey' cookie, add in up to 1/4 C extra of gluten-free baking mix. It will not spread as much.

April 18, 2011

Adele the Basil Queen, a voracious cook and accomplished eater (I mean this in the kindest way, dear Adele!) has adapted my tapioca gel solution to a gluten-free Cherry Chocolate Almond Brownie she's making for Passover (for all those concerned, tapioca, or 'pure tapioca flour' is Kosher for Passover). Check out her recipe and the very interesting account of how she arrived there:

April 01, 2011

The answer: a lot of places, actually. But I'm particularly fond of one mill based in the middle of nowhere: Harvey, North Dakota's Dakota Prairie.

I love that they sell retail quantities of their amazing, finely ground gluten-free flours direct to consumers.

They mill all their gluten-free flours in a separate, certified( GFCO) gluten-free mill. There's no fear of cross-contamination. Most of the flours they mill are organic, though you can buy some conventional flours (but why would you?). All are GM-free.

I love their buckwheat, millet, rice, quinoa and sorghum flours. Their brown rice flour is lovely.

March 29, 2011

A few years back my friend Rebecca told me about a style of Korean fried chicken that she claimed was better than anything she had eaten before. Made by a chain called "Bonchon", this fried chicken's secret lay not necessarily in its sauce but in the method for making it: it is fried twice, which cooks it thoroughly and gives it great color without burning it. Sauce is tossed with the chicken once it is fried, allowing the chicken to be customized to the eater's tastes. And it stays crunchy!

I started thinking about fried chicken when I received some New Belgium Brewing's Fat Tire Amber Ale as part as part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program. We were asked to pair food with New Belgium's beer or make something with it. I didn't want to create a 'beer battered' anything, though I happened to have nearly a gallon of duck fat in my freezer...and Bonchon-style, which relies on a sauce at the end of cooking to provide that kick of flavor, would be the perfect vehicle for a spicy beer-based sauce. What makes the Fat Tire perfect for a Bonchon-type sauce is that it isn't too hoppy, and its floral and citrus notes round out the sauce.

I tried the chicken two ways: the straight-ahead Bonchon style, which requires a 10 minute frying, a 2 minute rest, and another 10 minute frying to cook drumsticks perfectly, and the blanch-and-fry method favored by many who regularly make wings at home. To zest up the blanch-and-fry chicken, I simmered the chicken in Fat Tire, which really gave it some depth. Either method works, but the latter method really made a delicious chicken that fried up and turned golden a little faster than the twice-fried method.

Even if you've never tasted Bonchon chicken before, I think you'll really love this style of fried chicken. It is crispy, crunchy, and chewy. The tapioca starch leaves a thin crust that really retains its crunch even after the chicken has been tossed with sauce.

And for those of us who are gluten-free? Don't worry, I've also included the gluten-free conversions, including the use of a really delicious millet, buckwheat and rice-based Belgian brew from Green's.

If you're planning on frying, you should have a thermometer, or, if you're fortunate, a deep-fryer. You don't need duck fat, but in my opinion everything tastes better in animal fat. And its a really stable fat, so if you drain it and cool it immediately after use, you'll be able to use it again without worrying about it having an off-flavor the next time you use it. I wouldn't use fryer fat for making duck confit, but I wouldn't even think twice about using it as a frying medium - just double check it and make sure it tastes good before you go to the trouble of warming it up. I've included the above picture to demonstrate that you really should use a larger sauce pan than I did. There was a ton of clean up once I was finished frying.

While oil is heating, pour all but 1/3 C of the beer into a saucepan. Add chicken pieces and bring to a simmer. Once it has begun to simmer, cook for 11 minutes. Once the chicken has simmered for 11 minutes, remove from beer, pat dry.

Add dry chicken pieces to seasoned flour in plastic bag and shake vigorously, making sure each piece is coated. Shake off excess flour.

Drop into 350F oil - the temperature will drop, so watch the thermometer and try to keep at 350F. Also make sure you have plenty of space between the oil and the top of the pan. It will bubble!

Fry for exactly 10 minutes and remove from heat. Allow to sit for 2 minutes. Add back to oil and fry for 4 more minutes. Remove chicken from oil.

Toss chicken with sauce - I combine in a large bowl, but if you prefer a plastic bag, you can use that too.

Serve immediately.

For Twice-Fried Bonchon-style Chicken:

Do not blanch chicken first. Dry with a towel and then toss into bag with seasoned flour. Shake until completely covered. Shake off excess.

Drop into 350F Oil. Fry 10 minutes, remove for 2 minutes, fry for another 10 minutes. Make sure to time these exactly.

Remove from heat, toss with sauce.

Serve immediately.

Drink the leftover Fat Tire or Green's.

You can also liven things up by marinating the chicken before you fry it. This is your option. I made a marinade with ginger, garlic, salt and citrus. If you have a vacuum sealer, you can accelerate the speed by which the raw chicken takes on flavor - it can marinated vacuum-sealed for an hour or two. If you are just placing the chicken in a bag with the marinade, you'll need to leave it a little longer, say, overnight, to really have a flavor impact.

If you prefer smaller chicken wings over drumsticks, reduce frying time by 2 minutes on each end. The below picture shows wings coated in my Lazy Sauce. They were tasty!

March 04, 2011

If it looks like I've been posting photos from my phone lately, it is because I have. I've been doing most of my baking at work. I happen to not keep my camera at work, and most of the time I want to get pictures taken the moment I've finished a project. So I use my phone. Ehhh.

Every month I have to create recipes for a 'recipe blast' we send out to customers. Sometimes I adapt a recipe a customer has sent us. Sometimes I just make something up. I didn't actually intend to make brownies, they just sort of happened. Allow me to explain.

Someone asked if it was possible to make chocolate ganache with coconut milk. Of course it is. Using a 1:1 chocolate to coconut milk blend, I heated the milk to boiling and and poured it over a bowl of mini chocolate chips. Stir stir stir, done. Ganache. Easy.

Well, at the end of an experiment I was doing (what if I add lecithin? What if I heat it over a double boiler?) I had a ton of ganache left. And I thought, hmm, why don't I make some brownies with this?

One problem: we don't use coconut at work. Even thought it isn't a nut, coconut has been categorized as a nut by someone at the FDA since 2006. So no coconut here.

So I made ganache again, this time with water. I needed to change the ratio to 1:.5 - 1 part chocolate to .5 parts water. One-to-one simply didn't work - it made a lovely, water-based hot chocolate. But not a thick ganache.

Using the tapioca gel as the base, I made a brownie that the non-allergic, non-gluten-free crowd here at work actually liked (this is a big deal; if they don't like it, I don't share it). And then I stepped it up by turning it into a mint brownie, the type my mom used to make when I was growing up.

This brownie is more cakey than fudgy- though if you add a little more granulated sugar and reduce the baking time, you will get a fudgier brownie.

Yes, you’ll need to do a few steps before making these, but trust me, this is worth it! No one will ever know these are free of the top 8 allergens!

STEP 1:

Tapioca Gel:

1 C COLD Water

1 T Tapioca Starch

Combine water and starch in a saucepan and place on the stove set to high. Whisk until liquid becomes translucent and viscous. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

STEP 2:

Chocolate “Gananche”

1 C Allergy-friendly Mini Chocolate Chips

½ C Boiling water

Boil water on stove. Pour over chocolate chips. Stir until smooth and glossy. Allow to cool

February 25, 2011

I don't bake much at home, and I certainly don't bake cinnamon rolls. But something about my baking experiments of the last few days (I think I made about a dozen versions of gluten-free, egg-free, vegan bread until I gave up in frustration after the toasted quinoa flour ran out) made me hungry for cinnamon rolls. I think a failed bagel experiment (failed because I forgot to boil the bagels before baking them) made me yearn for a success, and I figured that my basic dough, with the right ratio of wets to drys, might get me there.

It took me four attempts to get the liquids right. The first one was tasty but too dry. The second one was too wet, then, when I tried to fix it, too dry. The next: too dry again. The fourth? Just right! Wet and roll-able and full of yeasty goodness.

The recipe may look complicated, but it is not. Basically you make tapioca gel, add it, along with some wet ingredients, to the dry ingredients. Make a rectangle, sprinkle cinnamon sugar all over it, roll it up, cut it, let it rise, bake it, spread it with icing then eat. Some of the textural issues with this gluten-free, vegan version (a slight wetness in the dough) can be addressed with a few egg whites, for those who can eat egg (my tips at the bottom of this entry).

One thing to note: like the pizza dough, this dough is very wet and sticky. Don't let that discourage you! Some well-placed plastic wrap on the counter will help you pat it into a rectangle and roll it out.

OPTIONAL: 1/4 C Vegan Margarine (this make the filling more ooey gooey but harder to spread on this dough)

Icing:

Beat together:

1 C Confectioners Sugar

1-1/2 t Cold Water

1/2 t Vanilla

1 T Oil

Procedure:

Make tapioca gel: combine water and tapioca in a sauce pan and stir until dispersed. Turn heat on stove to high and, stir mixture until it goes from cloudy to translucent. Remove from heat immediately and cool. You can speed up cooling by adding wet ingredients to this mixture (if you are not using instant yeast, don't add the water to the gel, save it to bloom the yeast).

Combine dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer (or in a bowl). If NOT using instant yeast, add it to the cold water.

Once the gel has cooled, add it and the rest of the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. The dough should come together, be sticky, but not liquid. Mix with a paddle for about 1 minute.

OK...here's where patience is required. If you've ever rolled sushi, that skill will come in handy.

The dough is very very sticky.

Take a good length of plastic wrap and spread it on the work surface. Scrape the contents of the bowl onto plastic wrap. Set your bowl down. Wet your hands with cold water. Now, pat the dough down so it makes a nice, long rectangle, about 9" x 12". You're going to roll this into a sushi-style spiral, so flat and rectangular is very important.

Take your cinnamon and sugar 'filling' (it needs to be dry rather than sticky or else the dough will tear) and evenly dust it all over the rectangle of dough. Now start rolling:

Taking the long end of the plastic (you can start from the short end if you want GIGANTIC cinnamon rolls), carefully roll the dough up - use the plastic to guide the dough, not your fingers (too sticky!). You will get a nice tube with a snail of cinnamon sugar inside.

Cut the tube into 1" widths. I roll these in the cinnamon sugar, but you only should if you like cinnamon a lot. Place these in either a muffin pan (for individual servings) or in a non-stick brownie or round cake pan with lots of space between the rolls. If the pan is not nonstick, prepare with oil and a little GF flour of your choosing. The rolls shouldn't be touching - the dough will rise and they will need to have space to expand. If you like a more 'baked" and chewy outside of your rolls, definitely use the muffin cups OR place these on a baking sheet, tucking the end piece under the rolls so it won't start unraveling during baking.

Allow to rise in a warm place for about 1 hour (you want them to not quite double in size). Or, instead of allowing the dough to rise, you could stop the process and place the dough in the refrigerator overnight. The yeast will slow way down but the flavor will develop a little more - and you can have them fresh in the morning.

After one hour (note: in hindsight I find this much too crowded. I like it when the rolls get a little more browning on the sides - if you can bake these in muffin tins or crowd them a little less, that would be ideal):

If you like, you can sprinkle more cinnamon sugar on the rolls.

Now, preheat your oven to 375F (190C).

Bake for about 20 minutes or until browned.

Allow to cool. Top with icing. Serve!

Enjoy

A couple tips:

If you can use egg, replace the Tapioca Gel with 3 egg whiles and water - to make 1 cup.

The flours can be in any combination you like, as long as you do include 1/3C of starch and don't use 100% rice (it can have a very wet chew). All of the flours I use are finely milled, so they do absorb quite a bit of water. If yours are less finely milled, or you go the all rice route, your results will be very different from mine.

(Here's what it looks like in the kitchen when I'm working out a recipe)

In my work I develop products free of eggs, dairy, nuts, soy (and beans), oats, gluten, wheat, fish, shellfish, sesame and sulfites. I'm a little jealous of people who can use eggs or dairy - both dairy and egg proteins give gluten-free products more of that 'just like wheat' taste and texture. It also means my work can be very challenging, something I rather enjoy, though it does require seemingly endless iterations until I hit something I'm actually satisfied with.

The pizza dough is made in two parts: tapioca gel is made first, and then you use the gel to make your pizza dough. The gel gives it an outstanding texture - nice crumb, good chew and decent crunch on the crust. Here's a small roll I made with the dough to show its internal structure and crumb. Not perfect, but pretty darn good:

If you use only 1 cup of Tapioca Gel and omit the oil, you can make a very easy-to-handle bagel or pretzel with the dough. I'm serious!

I liked my old version of pizza dough, but truthfully, it is too complicated - too many ingredients that I generally avoid (bean flours, oat flour) and it didn't have an ideal structure. This pizza recipe, using the tapioca gel recipe (link below) makes a great product that has a better structure than simple starch alone. I made a version of this with pre-gelantinized tapioca flour and it really didn't perform as well. The gel makes the difference.

This is slightly more elaborate than mixing all ingredients in one bowl, but trust me, it is worth the extra effort.

Combine in a sauce pan and turn on heat to high. Stir until color of mixture becomes transparent and a texture becomes gummy. Do not boil. Remove from heat immediately. Cool. May be kept in refrigerator for up to 24 hours. May be used as is when still warm, about 100F. Be very careful - the tapioca mixture will kill the yeast if it is above 110F.

While the gel is cooling, measure out your pizza dough ingredients:

Pizza Dough:

1-1/2 teaspoon dry yeast (if you use instant, you can omit the water and add yeast to the dry ingredients)

In a stand mixer, combine water and yeast and stir to dissolve. Add the 2 cups of tapioca gel and continue to mix. Add all dry ingredients, mix until smooth. Add in olive oil. Mix for an additional minute.

The dough will be very wet, unlike a traditional pizza dough. This is not a problem. Dry dough will not rise as nicely or taste as good.

You have two things you can do now:

1. scoop the dough into a loaf pan, allow to rise until double in volume and bake as bread (if you decide to go this route, replace the oil with water)

(it will look like this - this version has the 3T tapioca AND oil)

OR

2. Make Pizza

(I'd make pizza.)

To make pizza, lightly cover your mixing bowl with plastic wrap and allow dough to rise until double in volume, about one hour if you used slightly warm tapioca gel. If you prefer to make pizza ahead, you can put it in the dough refrigerator before you let it rise and use it the next day. You'll still need to let it warm up and rise if you do opt for the cold method.

Ready to bake?

Preheat your oven to 500F.

Scrape down the dough. It will come apart in chunks. Do not worry - it will bake like a dream. Keep your hands wet at this point - the dough is sticky and wet hands will allow you to handle it without making it stick.

On a baking pan place silicone baking sheet (recommended), piece of parchment OR tinfoil. You can use oiled tin foil on top of one of those aluminum pizza pans, the ones with perforations, if you like. Scoop out about a third of the dough from the bowl. With wet hands, shape it into a round. Press into the middle to thin it out. Keep the edges slightly thicker. Don't worry about putting a hole in the dough. You can fill in holes with more dough. You can poke holes in the middle to keep large CO2 bubbles from making your dough look less than perfect. Or not.

Allow your crust to sit in a warm place for ten minutes. It doesn't need to be oiled, but oiling doesn't hurt. You're not leaving it out for long and it won't dry out.

Place the dough in your extremely hot oven for 8-10 minutes. You'll be baking it twice (for an extra crispy dough) so make sure the crust doesn't get too dark. If you have opted for bread, bake it at 375 degrees rather than 500 for about 20-30 minutes.

Remove from oven. You can freeze the ungarnished crust at this point OR sauce, cheese it, and top it.

Place your topped crust back in the oven. Bake for about 5 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and bubbly. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

A few tips: For a crispier crust, replace the arrowroot with white rice flour and increase the toasted quinoa flour to 1 C while reducing buckwheat to 1/2 C.

Have a different grain preference? That's fine, just substitute in the grains you like...the results will be a little different, but it will still work as long as you include some rice flour and starch.

Remember: when handling the dough, keep your hands wet. It will not harm the dough.

* To toast quinoa flour: heat oven to 300F. Turn oven off. Place quinoa flour on sheet tray and leave in hot oven until oven cools down, or about 2 hours. It is ready to use when cool.

January 31, 2011

There is nothing more satisfying than tearing open a box containing a new food gadget, putting it together and using it for the first time to make something that was but a dim possibility hours earlier. Most kitchen gadgets don't really serve this need: you'd still be able to slice and egg without an egg slicer and even if you don't have a Kitchenaid stand mixer you'd still be able to whip up a meringue, albeit painfully, by hand.

The same is not really true for sausage making, although a couple years ago I wrote about my work-around solution that used a pastry bag, a food processor, and an elastic band with surprisingly good results. I know most people won't bother to make sausage at home, let alone do it by hand without a proper grinder and sausage stuffer, but it is, with the right equipment, a task no more difficult than baking bread. Like bread baking, it requires patience, a little bit of practice and the right mix of ingredients and equipment (you can't bake bread without a good oven, right?).

I'd been bemoaning the poor state of my kitchen, mostly to no one, since my move from the East Coast last May. I packed Lula (my five year old dog) and my car and headed back to Chicago where I took a job in research and development with a company that produces allergy-friendly and gluten-free snacks. I left all my things - my kitchen, most of my tools, all my books, and all of my furniture - in storage, with the promise that maybe, someday, I'd return for them. I had kept my knives, Kitchenaid, and a few pans and bowls out of storage; I knew the cost of replacing them would be prohibitive (culinary school made a knife- and cookware-whore out of me) so I sacrificed a few boxes of books to get the gadgets to my new home.

So my kitchen is only adequate: I have good knives, all the smallware I could possibly want, and one Kitchenaid mixer (I own 3). The accessories are buried somewhere in a temperature-controlled warehouse, along with everything else. One thing I do not have is a meat grinder. My mother had a meat grinder and still uses it once a year to make the most sublime potato pancakes I've ever eaten. After watching a friend struggle to get their sausage attachment to work with his Kitchenaid (it overheated the machine and ground the meat and fat into an over-fine paste, which makes for terrible sausage) I decided against buying one.

And then I received an email from Pleasant Hill Grain, a Nebraska-based distributor of meat grinders and grain mills (and almost every other lust-worthy kitchen object known) asking if I wanted to try out a new product they were selling, the Maverick 5501 Meat Grinder.

I don't like to write reviews unless it is of something I'd actually use. I frequently get emails from companies hoping I'll review some new food product they're introducing. I'll only write about food if it is something that I've fallen in love with, on my own, without any 'paid consideration' from a company. I don't really eat processed food and certainly no one visits this blog to read about the latest new energy bar. From time to time I'll review some books that are sent to me if they strike me as something I would have bought on my own. I've tried to avoid goods-for-reviews, but there are some opportunities I can't turn down. The chance to review a meat and food grinder was one of those opportunities. I've been yearning for a home sausage maker for years now and I do know my way around sausage (it was my task every Wednesday to make sausage using a 20 quart Hobart mixer when I was a fancy restaurant kitchen intern back in the 90s). So I considered my usual stance on reviews (no pay to play!) and abandoned it. Quickly.

I mean, seriously. A sausage grinder?

A week after I said yes to the review, the grinder arrived via Fedex. Shiny and new and ready to be put to work.

The Maverick embodies simplicity: it is at its core a powerful 550 watt motor with a hopper and a grinder and an "on/off" switch and a reverse switch. That's all. There are no bells and whistles, but every part is well-constructed. The worm screw is metal (vs plastic in other products) and the grinder arrives with three grinding plates of different diameters - perfect for coarse country sausage or fine ground beef - if that's your bag. The cutting blade is sharp, a minor detail that makes a significant difference in whether the grinder runs smoothly or has to be stopped frequently for cleaning, or overheats. The Maverick can be run for 15 minutes before the manufacturer suggests allowing it to rest. That's more than enough time to grind a large quantity of meat or stuff sausages.

I decided that I wanted to make sausage for my inaugural run. I called my local butcher, The Butcher and Larder and called to find out if they sold sausage casings. The very sweet woman who answered the phone (she owns B&L with her husband) told me that were getting a few hogs from Swan Creek Heirloom Farm (I think) and would have plenty of casings for purchase, and that they would set aside a couple small containers for me. A couple days later I picked up the casings - along with some of the most beautiful pork I've ever laid eyes on, to make linguica sausage with my friend Chris, who had big plans for our finished product (the recipe is below). Plans that involved a large annual party he throws, not by coincidence timed with the Superbowl.

I brought the pork home, cleaned it (there's a lot of silverskin on pork shoulder, and it needs to be trimmed off or it can jam the grinder), weighed it, and used Michael Ruhlman's Ratio app on my iPhone to ensure my proportions of meat to fat (they weren't selling fatback, so I bought some beautiful chops that included a thick layer of fatback and skin, which I trimmed, rendered, and gave to my dog as cracklins) and meat/fat to salt were correct. I then doused the meat with Solera sherry and set in in the refrigerator to marinate for two days. I mixed the linguica spices - a combination of garlic, paprika (I used the sweet Spanish smoked paprika) and cinnamon, allspice, and clove. I improvised a little on measurements - clove can get a little powerful and I brought it down by half. I let it sit for two days in the refrigerator.

On the day of sausage making, my friend Chris brought over some venison a friend who lives in downstate Illinois gave to him. We had enough casings to make both types of sausage - pork and venison. Here's my friend Chris pulling displaying the seasoned pork just prior to grinding:

We set up the Maverick for grinding - it was a quick process, no more than two minutes:

The Maverick includes quite a few accessories - a cookie dough die for extruded doughs, three grinder plates, a tube for forming kibbeh (??!!) and, thankfully, a sausage stuffer:

We initially set up the grinder for simple grinding. It took only a couple minutes to grind through all of the meat we had prepared, about 4 lbs.

It took less than a minute to take off the outer ring and replace the grinder with the sausage stuffer. We stuffed the ground meat into pork casings, not very skillfully.

The finished sausage, before cooking:

We ended up low-temperature poaching both venison and pork sausages - in part to help them form better interior structures and also to keep them from exploding on the grill when they're cooked on game day.

We did cook up some of the sausage, though (I didn't photograph the exploded sausages...live and learn). Here's the venison, which we made with Moor Porter from Cisco Brewers in Nantucket.

The Maverick made the entire job - from grinding to stuffing - a quick task rather than the long and slow chore it can be on the Kitchenaid grinder/stuffer. Nothing stops the blade; sinew and silverskin didn't cause the blade to slow or misalign against the grinder plate, something I've experienced with other grinders. I have only one quibble with the sausage stuffer - the end of the tube isn't rounded, so it is easy to tear natural casing on the rough edge. I also cut my finger when cleaning the outside piece that holds the cutter, plate, and screw in place - turns out those machined edges are sharp!

Cleanup is a mixed bag - the hopper set-up can be broken down within seconds and put through the dishwasher; some parts need a simple oiling after cleaning to prevent rust. The motor itself was trickier to clean up: I do wish that the plastic gear that both holds the hopper in place and turns the interior screw came off the machine as it was tough to clean out the meat that was stuck in the notches without violating the expressed warnings in the how-to guide. I had to position the spray nozzle of the faucet carefully, aiming only at the gear, so that water didn't work its way through the housing to the motor. I had tried cleaning it by hand but my efforts had little effect in removing the residue. I used a damp diluted bleached towel to sanitize the grinder after I finished the spray wash as I was unable to get soap and water into the small crevices on the machine.

So while cleanup isn't quite as easy or fast as it could be, the Maverick itself is a tremendous improvement over other home meat grinders, and is head and shoulders in quality, speed and function above the grinder + sausage attachment for the Kitchenaid. Priced under $100 dollars, the Maverick is fast, easy-to-use, and durable.

I had nearly given up making sausages at home. The Maverick makes it fun again. And I'm not saying that just because I was sent one - if I had spent my own money on this, I would be just as satisfied with its' performance.

4 T Smoked Paprika (use plain if you are using a smoker or don't like smoked flavor)

10 Cloves Garlic, finely minced

1 T Coriander, Ground

1 T Aleppo Pepper

2 t Black Pepper, Ground

2 t Oregano

1 t Cinnamon, Ground

1 t Allspice, Ground

1/2 t Clove, Ground

1 T Rice Vinegar

2 T Water

Combine all ingredients and allow to sit, refrigerated in a sealed bag, for 48 hours. If you have a vacuum sealer, you can speed up the process by taking as much air as possible out of the bag. Grind once on coarse and chill. Make sure your pork, especially your fat, is very cold bordering on just-starting-to freeze. Warm fat is the enemy of good sausage. Feed the sausage meat back into the grinder and stuff casings. Cook as desired.

January 22, 2011

For a year or two of my life following college I flirted with The Very Modern and Sophisticated Vegan Lifestyle, the influence of my cute animal activist boyfriend who my friends called Boring B. In an effort to take our dining above stir-frys, salads, and hummous, I took over cooking responsibilities and began plowing through the vegan bibles of the era, including a Seventh Day Adventist cookbook that focused on creating vegan items that imitated meat-full comfort foods like sour cream, meatloaf and mac and cheese with generous helpings of soy, nuts, and brewers yeast.

One of our stock pantry items was the ubiquitous brown box: Ener-G's egg replacer. I remember wondering how I could create a delicious-looking quiche like the one on the front of the box and the disappointment that followed as I pulled the resulting failure from the oven and, following a bite, dumped it in the trash.

And like that, Ener-G egg replacer and I were through. Soon after Boring B the Vegan animal activist moved across the country to the city where young people go to retire and I started buying eggs and dairy again. I didn't miss the hours-long sessions kneading seitan at the kitchen sink or struggling to find something on the menu that Boring B could eat when we dined out. I also didn't mind never hearing again the jailhouse confessionals from my mother after dinners at her house, dinners that were, as I later found out, full of hidden animal products added not for flavor but to give my mother secret satisfaction that she had forced Boring B to eat something he would have otherwise refused.

My next boyfriend was vegetarian. Cooking for him was a pleasure. And I totally forgot about my brief flirtation with egg replacer. I could walk down the aisle of a store, pass right by the weird products packed inside brown boxes and not even turn my head. I could make a quiche, an egg custard, heck, I could have an omlette. I didn't have to think about egg substitutes ever again...

Until I started a new job as the food developer at a company that makes baked goods free of eggs, dairy, wheat, nuts, soy and a host of other ingredients that are collectively known in the US as "The Top 8" (lucky us! - in Canada its" the top 10" and in the UK "the top 12"). In 20 years I had ended up exactly where I had started after college: desperately needing an egg substitute for vegan and allergy-friendly recipes I develop for our website (that's actually the easy and fun part of my job - the hard part is developing new products for the retail market that people want to eat and that taste good - have you tried gluten-free products lately? Most of them are terrible, though things have gotten much better).

Most egg substitutes are combinations of gums and starches that are added dry to a mix or hydrated briefly in cold water and added with the wet ingredients. They provide little binding and can, as in the case of flax gel, cause stomach discomfort in some. Ener-G's substitute is mostly potato and tapioca starch, with some leaveners and binders added. It is also expensive, retailing around $6 for a 16 oz box. A quick online search for other egg substitutes shows there's not much creativity in the world of binding, spreading and rising.

When I was developing a better version of my blondie recipe, I decided to play with the idea of a cooked gel as an egg and gum substitute. I had used flax gel in my first version and although I liked it, I didn't think it made a moist enough product. I also wanted to find an egg substitute that I could use when frying foods. I had seen some allergy-friendly cooks using flax gel, but again, I wanted to avoid using flax (and...just for the record: if you cook flax, you don't get the benefits of the omega 3 fatty acids - they're effectively destroyed by heating).

Since I don't like potato starch or corn starch, I started off with tapioca starch, which is bland (a good thing) and known for its excellent cooking and baking qualitites. I combined 1 T of tapioca starch with 1 C cold water (8 oz). I stirred it until the tapioca dissolved and then heated the mixture to boiling, stirring constantly, for about 30 seconds after it had begun to boil. I removed it from the stove and allowed it to cool. Once cooled I checked the viscosity - it was a little too gummy and thick. I watered it down to the consistency of egg whites. And used it as a 1:1 substitute for eggs in my recipe.

The results were spectacular. The blondies rose beautifully and were exceptionally moist.

A day prior I had been talking to one of my friends about a starch substitute he had been using on an industrial level to give soft pretzels a better sheen before alkalizing and frying them. It reminded me of some work I had done at my former employer, The Extremely Large Food Company With No Soul, when we had used a starch coating to give our baked goods shine without the high cost of real eggs. Which made me think: this tapioca gel may be just what I need to make a coating stick to food prior to frying.

I tried two different foods: chicken and eggplant. I gave each a dusting of rice flour, then dipped them in the tapioca gel (and shook off the excess) and then coated each in a gluten-free bread crumb substitute. I pan-friend one piece of eggplant and oven-baked another. Although the appearance of the pan-fried piece was prettier - it was golden brown - both were uniformly crunchy on the outside and moist on the inside, with absolutely no leaching of liquid into the pan or the baking sheet and minimal oil absorption of the food. The chicken also worked well. Here's a picture of the baked eggplant disks - not really interesting, but it shows how well the coating held to the eggplant:

One thing to note about using the tapioca gel in high fat and sugar baked goods is that it allows you to omit gums and gelling agents (such as xanthan, guar, agar agar, pectin, carageenan) from the recipe - unless you're in an industrial setting, which, if you are reading this blog for fun, I suspect you are not. The gel binds well and retains moisture - and survives the freeze-thaw cycle (as in, it retains its gelling property even after it is frozen and thawed out, something a basic corn starch cannot do). I'll try it in cake soon and see if the results are as satisfying as they are with cookies and bars. I've adjusted the recipe so that you won't need to water down the resulting gel - use as-is.

Cake and Commerce's Tapioca Gel Egg Substitute

2 t (approximately 5.3g) Tapioca Starch

1 C (226 g) Cold Water, filtered

Stir together starch and cold water and, stirring or whisking constantly, heat in a stainless steel pan (or other non-reactive pan) until boiling. Stir for 10-20 additional seconds after it comes to a boil but no more than that (do not overcook it - this can damage the gel structure).The color will become translucent. Remove from heat. Allow to cool before using. Because starches tend to retrograde (break down, causing water to leech out of the bound starch) over time (tapioca does this very very slowly), use this within 8 hours of making it and dispose of the gel when finished.

A 2t tapioca gel is close to the viscosity of an egg white. Simply water down, one tablespoon at a time, for a thinner gel. For frying, thin the gel by about 1/4-1/2 cup, until it is still viscous but not too gummy and thick.

Use it one for one in recipes as an egg substitute. Use 1/4 C of Tapioca Gel for one egg. I use a little more - about 1/3 C - with excellent results. May also be used as an egg substitute for r coating foods for oven-frying or oil frying.

For a thicker gel, increase tapioca to 1 T. For a thinner gel, decrease to 1 t.

January 13, 2011

We've got a photo shoot on Tuesday for some new packaging we're developing, and I've been tasked with the creation of our visual props - sweets that will make our chocolate chips and chunks look gorgeous.

Though I've got carte blanche to make anything I like with any ingredient I like (including wheat, eggs and butter - ingredients that are usually verboten around here) I decided to try my hand today at a gluten-free, vegan, and allergy-friendly blondie, a bar cookie that would highlight the magnificence of our chunks. Allergy-friendly means no soy or bean flours - there is some cross-linkages between certain bean flours (such as pea) and peanuts and soy is one of the top 8 allergens.

The recipe came out surprisingly well - baked for 20 minutes, it is soft, chewy, and good. And decadent. If you like a less moist blondie, bake this up to 25 minutes. But I don't recommend it. If you usually keep your blondies around for a few days, you'll want them to be moist.

Admittedly I used a few ingredients that aren't easy to find in the market. Pre-gelatinized rice flour, anyone? I've taken those out of this recipe - it will work just as well. When you mix the dough, it won't look like much - but it spreads like a dream when baked. Double up the recipe and increase baking time if you like a thicker blondie.

December 01, 2010

After a disastrous attempt at making a cake using quinoa flour, I abandoned the bitter, grassy stuff in favor of blends of other gluten-free grains, including buckwheat, teff, brown rice, millet and tapioca. I never thought I would go back to quinoa until a sample of a cookie made with quinoa flour changed my mind.

When I first abandoned gluten in my diet, about four years ago on the recommendation of my nutritionist who was trying to address chronic illness with diet, quinoa seemed like a natural fit for my baking. But because quinoa flour is so bitter, earthy, and grassy, it easily overpowers the other ingredients in a recipe. This is due, in part, to saponin, a toxic glycoside that coats the outer layer of the quinoa seed. Saponin can be washed off or removed via abrasion, and usually is before it is sold commercially to consumers. But the washing isn't always thorough enough, and some trace of saponin remains. There's also phytic acid, which gets in the way of the absorption of minerals in the digestive tract - this is removed to some extent by heat treating but requires fermentation and sprouting to more thoroughly break it down.

The saponin isn't a problem if you are buying quinoa seeds to use in savory recipes. All you need to do is wash the quinoa again, as you would certain kinds of starchy polished rice. But milled as flour and included in a recipe, this not-quite-washed-all-the-way grain becomes a gatecrasher and ruins just about everything it touches.

Yuck.

But there's an utterly simple solution to this, a solution that not only takes care of the bitterness and grassy flavors, but also inactivates trypsin inhibitor, (warning, long explanation ahead) a compound that reduces the bio-availability of trypsin, an enzyme which helps hydrolyse proteins (this is especially important for lysine, an amino acid that is vital to human health and is most commonly found in beans and dairy but occurs in quinoa in high levels).

The oven. That's the solution.

And quinoa is worth it. Its protein and fiber content is higher than wheat, it has fewer carbs than wheat, and it is packed with vitamin and minerals. Its fat content is slightly higher than that of oats and nearly 3x that of wheat. It works like pastry flour in baked goods, especially when combined with other flours. Trust me, baking the quinoa may be an extra step, but it is simple and easy and will make your baked goods better tasting and better for you.

You don't need to toast or pay attention to quinoa while you are heat processing it, but heat process it you must.

Here's all you need to do to make baking-ready quinoa flour:

Preheat oven to 212 or 215 F (100 C)

Empty out bag of quinoa flour onto as many sheet pans as you need, preferably onto a new piece of parchment paper

Make sure the layer of flour is no deeper than 1/4"

Place in preheated oven for two hours

Remove from oven. Allow to cool. Place in bags

Store bag in freezer for up to 8 months if you are not planning to use flour soon. Whole quinoa flour is relatively high in fat, making it vulnerable to oxidation and rancidity. Freezing will extend the shelf-life.

UPDATE: Since I wrote this post, I have worked with a quinoa flour that was "triple washed" before milling. And guess what? It was still earthy, soapy, and grassy. All quinoa flour needs to be toasted, unless it is pre-toasted.

January 31, 2010

My friend Alex of Feed Me Like You Mean It loves Burns Night, the annual celebration of the life, works, and loves of Scotland's 18th Century bard, Robert Burns. Burns night falls every January 25th and, in some places, is accompanied by a ritualized supper featuring haggis and haggis stabbing, Burn's poetry, toasts, singing, hand-holding, and, for the lucky, dancing and live music.

We were the lucky. Alex's friend and cohost of the event is a fiddler named Catherine who graced us with her playing throughout the meal and instructed our crew on the finer points of a Ceilidh dance.

Before the dance, however, we ate our ritual Burns meal: Haggis (traditional Scottish dish made from lamb variety meats, oatmeal and herbs and cooked in the stomach of a sheep) , tatties (potatoes) and neeps (turnips) accompanied by plenty of lactofermented vegetables. As a non-meat eater, I was asked to bring the vegetarian Haggis, something I'd never tasted nor experienced before.

I set out to make it two days before the event so that the flavors could marry a bit. This is unnecessary - you can make it and serve it right away, though it does get a bit better with time. While I cooked, my friend Dwayne provided flavor profile feedback - until a few days ago, he's the only friend of mine locally who had any prior experience with haggis. I just tried to make it tasty, and he gave me feedback on texture and spice. In the end the haggis was exactly what I wanted to eat, with different textures and flavor mimicking a 'real' haggis (minus the stomach).

This is a rather ingredient-intensive recipe, but it is quite delicious and worth the effort. It looks remarkably similar to haggis when side-by-side on a plate. It can be made ahead, though I didn't try to freeze it.

Cake and Commerce's Vegetarian Haggis

This serves a large group...12 or more! Cut recipe in half for smaller parties

1/4 C lemon juice or similar (I used Kombucha, but feel free to use sherry vinegar etc)

Salt and Pepper to taste

Optional: 3 oz cultured butter, to be added at the end

Vegetable Stock

3 ea 5" strips Kombu (kelp)

2 large carrots, peeled

2 cloves garlic

1 onion, peeled and halved

1 rib celery

peppercorns and bay leaves

Procedure:

Make quick vegetable stock: combine all ingredients except Kombu in a pan and cover with about 10 cups of water. Simmer for 30 minutes. Reduce heat, add kombu and allow to cook - without simmering - for about 10 minutes. Remove Kombu from stock and set aside for another use. Allow stock to simmer for 5 minutes. Strain. Lower heat and keep warm until needed.

Cook Lentils: cover red lentils with hot water. Cook until lentils are soft and water is absorbed, about 25 minutes. Do not season.

Make Haggis Heat 1/2 of the olive oil in a large stock pot with a heavy bottom. When hot, add chopped onions, garlic and carrots and cook until translucent. Set aside in a bowl. Add more oil to pan and when hot enough, add only enough mushrooms to cover the bottom of the pan. Allow to brown without moving mushrooms around pan. Sprinkle a little bit of salt over the top of the mushrooms. Once they start sticking to the pan, stir with a wooden spoon to loosen. Add rest of mushrooms and continue cooking. Sprinkle all spices except fresh thyme over the mushrooms and stir. Stir in the cooked carrots, onions and garlic. Allow mixture to continue cooking. Once mushrooms have given off much of their liquid, stir in wine. Allow wine to cook down and mushrooms too brown slightly. Do not burn!

Add in thyme and lentils and tofu. Stir. Add enough vegetable stock to cover the mushrooms. Bring to a boil. Once boiling, add oats and stir. Reduce heat to a simmer. Stir frequently, making sure mixture does not stick to the bottom, as if it were risotto.

When oats are cooked, stir in sunflower seeds. Check salt. Add salt to taste - don't skimp, you've got a lot of haggis here. Stir in enough acid (kombucha, vinegar, lemon juice) to brighten the flavor and make it pop. Add butter if you plan to make this dish vegetarian rather than vegan. Make sure the dish is not runny like a soup, but not as dry as stuffing. It will gel a bit when cooled, thanks to the oats in the recipe.

When finished, place it in either oiled tins, oiled loaf pans, or a haggis-shaped plastic bag. You could also wrap it in banana leaves (it will steam up well) if you prefer. Bake right away or store in the refrigerator up to 48 hours before serving.

Reheat in an oven in a covered dish and uncover for the last few minutes of baking once heated through, on pan in the oven for a drier haggis, in the tins or molds or on the stove top with more broth or water added.

January 11, 2010

I like crackers. I like their snap and crunch. I like spices on my crackers - chilies and herbs. I like cheesy crackers, crackers flavored with sharp cheddar or Gruyere or Parmigiano-Reggiano. Crackers are comforting.

I don't eat crackers often, and I would never eat a cracker with cheese. That's just me. When I was a cheesemonger and still wheat-friendly, a crusty baguette or a thick-cut slice of pain levain was the accompaniment I needed.

I don't eat much cheese now, though my love for it has hardly abated. I'm a little light in the wallet and I can never eat on my own the amount of cheese I'd have to buy to indulge my cravings.

So a cheese cracker - a compact little treat loaded with sharp raw cheddar - seems like a pretty good compromise to me.

I realize not everyone reading this can tolerate certified
gluten-free oats, but for those of you who can, I warn you to use
restraint once you've baked them. I quickly polished off a batch meant
for a friend and gobbled up half of another batch I was bringing to
another. I caught my mom sneaking crackers off the plate while I was readying them for their close-up.

This recipe is made entirely in the food processor - bonus! There
are a few steps involved, and the rolling out may be the most
labor-intensive part of making these. But I assure you it is worth it!

Cake and Commerce's Oaty Cheese Crisps

4 oz Certified Gluten-free Oats

3.5 oz Sharp Cheddar Cheese, grated (I prefer white cheddar)

3 T Brown Rice Flour

1 T Flax Seed or Chia Seed, ground

1/4 t cayenne pepper

1/4 t baking powder, gluten-free

1/4 t agar-agar (you can substitute another gum if desired)

1/2 t salt

1 sprig fresh thyme, leaves only

1/4 cup water, cool

1 oz lightly toasted pumpkin seeds (about 2T raw pumpkin seeds)

ground pepper, to taste

sea salt for garnish

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350 F (or 300 F Convection)

Combine ALL ingredients EXCEPT for water, pumpkin seeds, ground pepper and sea salt garnish in the bowl of food processor until it resembles corn meal. While running the processor, add water all at once. Stop processor once dough forms. Add in pumpkin seeds and pulse one or two times (alternately you can add them in later by hand to avoid breaking them up too much).

Place one half of the dough on a silpat or parchment paper, pat it down with your hands then and roll out to about 1/4" thick (or thinner if you want very wispy crisps). It should not be sticky. If it is sticky while rolling, place a piece of plastic wrap over the top while you roll it out.

With a crimped-edge roller slice into squares and bake as is (it will be easy to break up once it is cooled) OR cut with a biscuit cutter into neat rounds. If you opt for rounds, you will need to refrigerate the dough a bit before rolling it out in order to move the crackers easily. I've also used a knife to slide out the crackers. If you try it with your hands, you'll break up the dough.

Brush the tops of the crackers with a little bit of water and sprinkle tops with sea salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes, herbs, or anything else you like.

Bake on the center rack for 15 to 20 minutes, or until a cracker, when removed from the oven and cooled for a minute, is no longer soft in the middle. Note: you do not want these to turn golden; if they darken too much, the cheese will begin to taste bitter. If you use yellow cheddar, turning golden won't be an issue...you'll just need to watch it a little more carefully for telltale signs of burning.

Once cooled, these will keep for a long time (a month or more) if stored in a cool, dry place...emphasis on dry. Humidity is the enemy of crispy baked goods!

January 06, 2010

A lot of readers have asked me where I buy the light buckwheat flour I use in many of my recipes. At last I have found the source- a task that took longer than I expected due to the reluctance of the staff at my local health food store (I'm looking at you, Debra's) to tell me what brand they were selling bulk.

Today an article in the Boston Globe about a small cereal company altered me to the existence of a natural foods distributor, so I checked their site and found the light buckwheat I've been looking for, along with brand name and backstory. Thank you Associated Buyers of New Hampshire!

Turns out the buckwheat is grown in far northern Maine by the Bouchard Family. They sell it from their website. The cost, INCLUDING POSTAGE (as of today) is $16 for 3 lbs - that's pretty much what I am charged by Debra's to buy it in one pound increments.

January 02, 2010

Thanks to a care package from Justin at Marx Foods, I found myself swimming in samples of dry exotic mushrooms. The haul included about a half-ounce each of dry porcini, shiitake, matsutake, maitake, chatarelles and black trumpet mushrooms. Although my mandate was to experiment, I was in a comfort food mood when the package arrived. And what better way to enjoy the mushrooms than to work them into a simple risotto?

Before I started the risotto, I reconstituted the dry mushrooms in water just off the boil (translation: I turned off the heat once it boiled and poured the water over the mushrooms to cover). I let the mushrooms sit for 10 minutes. I strained the mushrooms and placed the liquid in a sauce pan. I added a 5" strip of kelp (kombu) to the liquid (seaweed contains .27% glutamic acid and intensifies the flavor) and put the shiitake mushrooms in the sauce pan as well, along with a sprig of thyme and two more cups of hot water. I brought the liquid to a simmer while I prepared the risotto.

What I love about risotto is that it doesn't take much to make it, and make it tasty. A little stock, some garlic, rice, oil or butter. Herbs. And then whatever else your refrigerator is willing to yield.

Reconstitute mushrooms, as above, and strain. Place liquid in a large saucepan along with at least 2 additional cups of water. Return shiitake to saucepan along with kelp and one thyme sprig. Simmer. Dice the rest of the mushrooms. Set aside.

Remove thyme leaves from remaining thyme sprig. Chop fine. Set aside.

Meanwhile, heat 2 T olive oil oil in heavy-bottomed sauce pan over medium heat. Add onions, garlic, carrots and saute for 1 minute. Lower heat if too hot and sweat until translucent. Add in 3/4 of mushrooms and turn up heat. Continue to heat until mushrooms have given up much of their liquid.

Add in arborio rice and stir until all rice grains are covered in a fine coat of oil.

Pour red wine over rice. Stir until completely absorbed.

One cup at a time, add in mushroom broth, stirring the rice until the liquid is absorbed. Continue to add stock until the rice is al dente, making sure the rice has not absorbed all the liquid. It should be soft and, when served, a ring of stock should pool around the rice.

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir in lemon zest, lemon juice,

Garnish with cheese (parmigiano-reggiano) if desired.

If you do not wish to make this vegan, you can always reconstitute the mushrooms in unseasoned (unsalted) chicken stock.

December 14, 2009

When I'm feeling naughty, I pull my gallon tub of rendered duck fat out of the freezer and cook something with it. Once it was french fries - crisp, gamey, duck fat fries. Another time it was pasta, when I ran out of my cultured butter. And tonight? Tonight my mom and I ate the best potato pancakes we can ever remember, thanks to that tub of duck fat. They were crispy, so crispy and had a savoriness I cannot recall ever having tasted in a latke.

There really is a tub:

And the missing fat in the middle? Exactly what we used tonight in making the latkes.

First, the recipe:

Cake and Commerce's Mom's Potato Pancakes

4 large Russet or other starchy potatoes, peeled and chopped into quarters

Soak potatoes, onions and carrots in cold water for at least 30 minutes, Using the coarse zesting side of a box grater, grate carrots, onions and potatoes into a fine paste. When finished, drain out liquid. Add in eggs, one at a time and mix until incorporated. Whisk in flour, soda, salt and pepper. In a hot fry pan filled with something delicious like duck fat, or less delicious such as vegetable oil, fry the pancakes until golden. Eat immediately. Pancakes do freeze well.

If you aren't sure if the pancakes are balanced, fry a little one up and test for flavor. Mom says it should be balanced in the following ways:

Now heat up your skillet and add the fat (apparently my grandmother used Crisco!):

Once it is hot, add your batter. Make sure you have enough fat that your pan does not dry out. If the fat is not hot enough, your pancake will absorb all the fat. It will be delicious but stomach-ache inducing.

When one side is golden, flip it over:

Continue cooking until both sides are golden brown and the pancake has cooked through. Try it as you go. I find myself unable to resist the urge. If there's a broken-apart pancake in the pan, its mine. And even if it is perfect, the first one usually ends up in my stomach.

Keep ''em cooking, and add fat as your pancakes continue to absorb it. A dry pan leads to burning very quickly. A smoking pan is the telltale sign that you need to add fat, and add it now.

Soon enough you'll have a pan of pancakes cooked to various degrees of golden crispiness. Worry not - just keep the ones that need more cooking in the pan a little longer.

We drain our pancakes on brown paper bags, a commodity that is ever harder to find in our house thanks to recyclable bags. If you have no paper bags, you can also use tea towels or paper towels.

Tonight we ate ours with freshly made apple sauce. Mom left the red skins on and so the sauce turned a baby food shade of pink:

And I ate mine with some lactofermented celeriac:

Thank you mom, for letting me stalk you in the kitchen while you were trying to cook!

December 12, 2009

Five months ago, my friends Melissa and Azu joined me for a trip to a berry farm in New Hampshire under the shadow of Mt Monadnock in New Hampshire. I wrote about it in this post. We picked blueberries, raspberries, and red and black currants. I made jam from the berries and and red currants and turned the black currants into liqueur - known as 'cassis' - by combining them with lemon, vodka and sugar and mashing it all together and leaving it in my basement.

Until today. Today I finally bottled the results after months of patient waiting. The cassis is a rich ruby elixir bursting with summer flavor. It is bright, acidic, just slightly boozy and very fruit forward. It has a great mouth-coating quality but isn't cloyingly sweet.

I like to give liqueurs that I make as gifts during the holiday season. I had nothing at home that would adequately show off the cassis to its advantage, so I headed out to my local home brew shop, the Grateful Dead-influenced "Strange Brew" a few towns over to pick up some bottles, labels, corks and sleeves. I picked out a bottle that looked like the cassis bottle Bonnie Doon uses. And did my best to make the guys at the shop make eye contact with me. Which they mostly avoided. Weird guys.

Back home I continued to strain out the juice from the currant lees. I used a couple strainers and a jelly strainer to filter the liqueur. It took a longer than I had hoped and was very messy. Later, as my mother made dinner that night, I could hear her say, "sticky sticky!" as she jumped from one foot to the next. I guess I left a little on the floor.

I quickly designed a silly, information-spare label using a photo of currants as the background. I burned out the image a little too much. If you look really hard, you just might be able to tell that there are currants in the background.

In the end, I had enough liqueur for 12 375 ml bottles - more than enough for holiday gifts.

Doing the math, it doesn't necessarily make sense to make your own, especially if you cannot pick your own black currants (which is what I did to save money). Including berries, vodka, other ingredients, bottles, labels, and corks, it cost me about $12 per 375 ml bottle to make. It doesn't cost much more (maybe $2 more?) and is a lot more convenient to buy a decent bottle of French cassis.

Sadly, for pretty obvious legal reasons, Linsey's Monadnock View 2009 Cassis isn't for sale anywhere. But if you have something you'd like to trade, drop me a line!

December 09, 2009

In the last 12 months I've developed and adapted a few recipes that will make your gluten-free, allergy-friendly baking more sweet this season. This post links to those recipes that are appropriate for this time of year. Enjoy!

The cookie is different from your standard oatmeal cookie: it is plump and, when fresh, moist in the middle. It is a bit crisp and is more crumbly than chewy. There's a liberal dusting of sea salt on the top of the cookie (I use Maldon, from the UK). But I can't eat these cookies, at least not often (probably not a bad thing) - the second ingredient on the label is wheat. So I set out to make a version that I could eat. Not a vegan version. Not yet. First I just wanted to get the texture right.

I experimented twice with the recipe. I didn't love the first version, a slightly-too-oaty cookie that was soft and chewy (oops). I gave up for nearly 6 months. And then this morning I tasted Kayak's cookie again. And decided to give it one more try. And finally it worked.

Unlike the last time, I decided to use no other grains except oats in the recipe. The flour is derived from coconut, something you can find on Amazon or in your local natural food retailer.

Usually I'd use organic oats in the recipe, but I had on hand a couple pounds of Bingo's amazing sprouted oats. The oats are grown in Quebec, unlike most oats that I believe are grown in Manitoba. Bingo, located in Brattleboro, Vermont, focuses on granola but also sells their organic, sprouted oats at the farmers market. They'll also ship some to you if you call them. They're a bit of a luxury, but I think they're worth it. After all, decadent chocolate oat cookies aren't an every day item, right?

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine rapadura, remaining stick of butter (at room temperature). Mix until lighter and creamy.

Add in eggs and mix until completely combined. Add vanilla. Mix.

Add in cooled chocolate and butter mixture. Mix for about 10 seconds, scrape down, and mix for 10 more seconds.

In a separate bowl, combine all the dry ingredients EXCEPT the remaining chocolate chips (you'll add those at the end). Note: if you want softer cookies that spread a little more, reduce oats by 1/2 cups.

Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients in bowl and mix until cookie dough comes together. Scrape down bowl and mix for about 5 more seconds. Add the 8 oz of chocolate chunks or chips. IMPORTANT NOTE: if you like chocolate chunks in your cookies, feel free to add more. It will make the cookies more...chocolately!

With a 1-1/2 oz ice cream scoop, scoop cookies onto parchment or Silpat. There doesn't need to be much space between the cookies, they do not spread much. Push down tops a little, if desired.

Sprinkle tops of cookies with Maldon sea salt. Press down gently on salt flakes so they won't fall off after baking.

Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until shiny on top, crinkles appear, and bottom is slightly colored. Bake longer for a drier cookie. It will harden significantly when cooled, so try to avoid overbaking unless you love a more crumbly cookie.

November 04, 2009

While most people in the Northeast have put away their boiling water canners, a few indefatigable preserving mavens burned the late October oil to participate in this month's preserving challenge: Pears.

Because our numbers have dropped so dramatically from last challenge to this one, we'll suspend our Can-o-rama challenges until strawberries come back into season in the spring. I know that's a long way away, but trust me...once we get going again, we will have weekly challenges and fruit comes in and goes out of season.

October 28, 2009

This crunchy cookie makes picture-perfect gingerbread people, stained glass cookies, decorations (you can make edible ornaments with the dough), and gingerbread houses. If you don't like palm shortening or Smart Balance, try this with butter. You can substitute xanthan or guar for the agar, but I strongly urge you to try the agar if you haven't yet. If you don't have rapadura, which is evaporated cane juice, you can substitute 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar. Just omit the maple syrup, too. If you don't have all the flours I recommend below, you can use all-purpose gluten-free flour. Make sure it does NOT have added xanthan or guar or leavening.

The dough is a bit dry at first, but rolls out beautifully and holds together well.